THE FINAL WEEK of Carnival season is utter madness. It’s like everyone knows Ash Wednesday is right around the corner and they need to sin all of their sins while the sinning’s still good. The excitement in New Orleans ramps up to an all-time high. Every bar on Bourbon is open 24 hours. Beads litter the sidewalk. Hotels are at capacity, and the city is complete gridlock as streets get shut down for parades. There are hundreds of them, each hosted by a different New Orleans krewe. Usually, I have time to enjoy the festivities, but not this year.
When I was still in the initial planning phase for NOLA (i.e. partaking in Pinterest sessions on the company clock back at Sotheby’s), I thought it would be a brilliant idea to do a soft opening on the Monday before Fat Tuesday. Everyone’s already in party mode, there’s a ton of press out covering events, and I could build on the momentum of Mardi Gras. Now, suddenly, I think I’m a complete idiot.
Even with all my careful planning, construction delays have made the entire process a total nightmare. I should postpone the soft opening, but as anyone in business knows, that’s nearly impossible at this point. Word has already spread. I’ve already invited family and friends. Two separate local news crews are doing interest pieces about the gallery, my mom, and me. There will be a reporter from the Times-Picayune, not to mention two dozen food, art, and lifestyle bloggers in attendance, and I’ve already hired a florist, a caterer, and a photographer. Everyone will walk out the door at the end of the night with a little bouquet of flowers, a bag of coffee, a small art print, and at least one picture worthy of sharing on social media.
The soft opening itself is coming along flawlessly.
My building is not.
Beau has banned the “D” word from my vocabulary, but I still whisper it in a huff every chance I get.
Delays. Delays. Delays!
For the last two weeks, I’ve spent every waking hour at NOLA or at Beau’s house. I’d be twitching in a corner if it weren’t for him. He’s been leaving work at 4:00 PM every day so he can come help me, and I didn’t even realize how much I was doing until he stepped in and took some of the burden off my shoulders.
With him here, I have four hands instead of two. It doesn’t take long before he starts knowing what to do before I have to ask.
He hounds the contractor, calls in favors, and turns water into wine. He’s confirmed the vendors. He brings me water and makes me drink at least two big gulps because apparently, I’ve forgotten that my body needs nourishment to survive.
It’s Saturday morning and Beau and I are fighting our way through the crowds in the French Quarter. Every time I blink, tourists multiply. One drunk buffoon becomes two before my very eyes. Even if you can hail an Uber, you can forget about driving anywhere. The only way we can get from Beau’s apartment to NOLA is by walking with fierce determination and a couple of elbow jabs thrown in for good measure.
We arrive by 8:00 AM, and my battalion of baristas is due any minute. I’ll spend the day training them and going over what the soft opening will be like on Monday. I’m so nervous, I haven’t been sleeping well.
“Here, eat this,” Beau says, holding up a breakfast taco we picked up on the way.
I push it away. “No time for chewing!”
“Lauren.”
Fine. I take it out of his hand and scarf it down in two bites. My stomach protests. I realize I haven’t had a proper meal in days.
“Do you think we can do this?” I ask, looking up at Beau with wide, scared eyes.
I realize he couldn’t understand me due to the amount of egg and bacon I have crammed in my mouth, so I swallow and try again.
He nods confidently. “You’re stressing yourself out for no reason. Construction will be finished today. We did the blue tape walkthrough last night. There are just minor touchups that need to be fixed. The light in the bathroom should be replaced this afternoon, but we have a backup plan in case it’s not.”
“I need to call the bakery and confirm our order.”
“Did that yesterday.”
“Do you think we have enough coffee?”
“You have a metric fuck-ton.”
“Right. Maybe I’ll just go back into the storage room and count beans just to be sure.”
He grabs my shoulders, and I realize I’ve been pacing. He bends and suddenly his blue eyes are all I see. They’re the color of serenity.
“Did you sleep at all last night? I felt you tossing and turning.”
I cringe. “I can sleep at my place tonight. I didn’t mean to keep you up.”
“That’s not what I meant. I like you staying at my place.”
I draw a circle on his chest. “You know eventually I have to sleep at my own apartment though, right? I’m paying rent.”
“You’re about to be making more money here than you’ll know what to do with.”
He kisses my nose.
I can’t help but laugh. “Beau, okay, it’s not about the money, it’s—”
“Do you want to stay with me?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s settled.”
Not really.
“I like sleeping with you, but I also don’t want to get rid of my apartment.” Now suddenly, I can’t meet his eyes. “I like having it in case…”
I’m expecting him to force more of an explanation out of me, but surprisingly he seems to understand.
“I get it. This is still new. If you want to keep it, you can, but I’ll help cover the rent in the meantime.”
I open my mouth to argue, but then my baristas arrive together, all smiles. Better yet, they’re both wearing their light gray NOLA t-shirts and trendy jeans. Employees! My employees! This is happening!
Training only takes a few hours. My register is a nifty little swiveling iPad. I show them the interface and they familiarize themselves with the espresso machine. They’ve both worked at coffee shops before, so they know the drill. The only difference here is that there will be art for sale as well. My mom’s abstract paintings are already hanging on the wall, blasting the space with much-needed splashes of color. On top of her large-scale canvases, shelves are set up along the wall beside the coffee bar and will display prints, t-shirts, and small pottery goods, as well as NOLA-branded merchandise. Right now, the shelves aren’t as full as I’d like them to be, but that will come with time. I had to fill some space with a stack of coffee mugs. The baristas are impressed with what I’ve managed to do with the space in so little time. I hesitate to believe them since they’re on my payroll, but Beau insists they’re being honest.
Around lunchtime, Mrs. Fortier and my mom arrive to provide reinforcements. Now that they’re neighbors, they’ve been spending a lot of time together. Today, they’ve coordinated their efforts. Mrs. Fortier brings sandwiches and my mom brings her weaponized lemonade. Beau and I both separately warn his mom to pour it down the sink discreetly.
They aren’t as helpful as I thought they would be. I give them menial tasks and they still just end up distracting one another with gossip from around town. At one point, my mom asks Mrs. Fortier if she saw Preston in the paper with his new girlfriend, and Beau and I exchange a private laugh. Honestly though, I’ve never seen two women with so much to say. Gardening, books, TV shows—they bond over it all. My mom has always been a little recluse, opting to spend hours in her studio rather than lunching with other ladies from the Garden District, but apparently Mrs. Fortier brings out her social side. In the end, I give Mrs. Fortier a broom and my mom a dustpan. They can talk and sweep at the same time. The floor has never looked cleaner.
We stay so late that by the time I lock up, my eyes are watering and I’m shaky with hunger.
“Do you think this will all be worth it?” I ask Beau as we walk home, hand in hand.
“Absolutely. I love the concept and I think it’ll be successful. If you’d come to Crescent Capital with the idea, I would have invested.”
It means so much to hear him say that, and I poke him to see if he’s telling the truth. “You’re not just saying that because of my bedroom binder?”
He shakes his head, like he can’t even believe I’m asking. “You’re going to be a sensation, Lauren. Just wait and see.”
LATER THAT NIGHT, I can’t sleep, and I don’t want to keep Beau up with my tossing and turning again. I gently lift his arm off me, tuck a pillow in the spot where I was (it’s more or less as lumpy as I am), and slink out of bed, grabbing his my LSU sweatshirt out of the closet before padding downstairs. After I make a pot of coffee, I carry a steaming mug into the front parlor. In the center of the room, there’s an antique desk with an iMac he’s given me free rein of. It takes a second to boot up. While I wait, I blow on my coffee, trying to cool it down enough to drink. My intention is to check my emails for NOLA; it’d be nice to have them all read and organized by the time Beau wakes up.
I sign on to Gmail and there are 50 new emails waiting for me. 50! When I went to sleep, my inbox was empty. The first email’s subject line reads: MAJOR CATERING CRISIS. I cry for exactly 10 seconds and then give in to the urge to rest my head on the edge of the desk and close my eyes.
This will all be over tomorrow.
Except not really, because then NOLA will be officially up and running. It’s going to take a lot of my attention. I have plans to hire a manager and two more baristas as soon as possible. A digital marketing team is handling my online presence, and Beau talked me into consulting with an accountant. In a few months (okay, years), it will operate like a well-oiled machine and I’ll be able to step back and watch it grow. Then a few years after that, I’ll take another step back and possibly be able to sleep again.
I sigh.
Having worked through my minor freak-out, I blink my eyes back open and notice the bottom drawer of Beau’s desk is cracked open just a few inches. Once a snoop, always a snoop. I tug it open all the way and find a small white cardboard box. It’s unlabeled, so naturally, I lift the lid just a smidge to see what’s inside, and my heart does a cartwheel when I see a photo of tiny Beau peeking up at me from the top of a stack. It’s old and faded, wallet-sized. Beau has shaggy brown hair and a big, crooked grin. Kneeling beside him on one knee is his dad. The similarity between the man in the photo and the man asleep upstairs makes my heart pang with sadness. I hold the photo closer and examine the details: his dad’s thick mustache and acid-washed 80s jeans, the way they’re both squinting into the sun. Beau’s dad has his arm looped around Beau’s shoulders and Beau’s leaning his full weight against his dad’s chest. They’re cheek to cheek. It’s love at the most basic level: father and son.
My hand shakes as I put the photo down on the desk and I turn back to the box, hungry for more of these old memories. There are at least a hundred photos stashed inside, but a stack of folded papers catches my attention first.
I unfold them slowly, and I’m not sure what I’m looking at right off the bat. Some of them are pages printed offline. Some of them are newspaper clippings so fragile and old I worry they’ll tear if I’m not careful.
It’s takes me a few long seconds to register what I’m looking at, and then chills run down my spine. My stomach tightens.
All these years, I thought I suffered alone. I thought my feelings were one-sided, but this is proof to the contrary.
I drop the papers back into the box and take the stairs two at a time. It’s early; I should let him sleep. Instead, I dropkick his door open and fling myself onto the bed like a flying squirrel.
He groans.
I kiss his cheeks and forehead and mouth and chin. My hands are on his naked chest. If he ever tries to go to bed with a shirt on, I’ll scissor it off of him like a sexy paramedic.
“You’re letting all the warmth out,” he growls mildly.
He peels the blanket back and then wraps it over me. We’re in a cocoon and it smells like his body wash. We showered together just before bed.
I kiss him on the lips and he smiles.
“I was having a really good dream. You were naked and on top of me, so now I’m not sure if I’m asleep or awake.”
He finds the hem of my sweatshirt. He tugs it up, covering my stomach with his hand. Heaven will feel like his heated palm against my skin.
“Beau! I’m not trying to sex you into consciousness. I’m waking you up because I have a question: did you think about me in the decade we were apart?”
He groans sleepily. “That’s a wake-up-able question?”
I playfully shake his shoulders like I’m a harsh interrogator. “I’m asking the questions, tough guy. You have to answer.”
“Maybe. Some.” He doesn’t open his eyes. “I don’t know. I was too busy with work.”
“Uh huh.”
Two dimples bracket his smile. “I went on a lot of dates, really played the field. So many girlfriends, I lost count.”
His hand slips higher and he groans when he finds my bare breast. Lust makes it hard to get the next words out, but I manage.
“You’re a bad liar. I found your stash downstairs, the old newspaper articles about my debutante days.”
“My mom gave me those.”
“What about the clippings from Sotheby’s for sales I helped facilitate?”
“I was thinking of starting an art collection.”
“There was a piece of scratch paper with my old work email address scribbled on it.”
He sighs because we both know this is damning evidence.
“I was feeling depressed on my birthday a few years back. I thought about contacting you.”
My heart breaks. “Why didn’t you?”
His hand falls back to my hip and his eyes flutter open. “Contrary to popular belief, I wasn’t all that sure of your feelings for me. You might’ve thought it was creepy. Besides, the last time I’d seen you, you were shouting about hating me.”
“Did I say I hated you? I meant to say I loved you. It came out wrong.”
“Ah, yeah, I can see how that could happen. Similar words.”
“Sometimes my Ls sound like Hs. Let me try it now.”
“I’m listening.”
“Beau, I hulate you.”
“Yeah, see you did it again.”
“Damn, hold on. Let me do some warm-up exercises. Red leather, yellow leather. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.”
I roll my tongue and flutter my lips.
Beau hooks his hands under my arms and draws me up higher on top of him so our hips are perfectly aligned. I’m splayed out like a frog, pinning him down with all my weight. It’s glorious. He’s mine. His hands grip my derrière and I prop myself up on my elbows on his chest so I can see his face.
He’s finally awake now. Even in the low light, he glows. I can make out his lovely blue eyes, red lips, tousled brown hair. He looks younger than he is, boyish and handsome. I want to propose to him—propose that we stay here until we turn into dusty skeletons.
His hand reaches up to play with my curls, and I ask a question I’ve been curious about.
“So now that we’ve cleared up the fact that you’ve been harboring angsty, shoebox love for me for upwards of a decade, what would you have done if I hadn’t moved back to New Orleans?”
He smiles lazily, twisting a curl around his finger. “I’d have eventually come to New York.”
“And if I was dating someone else?”
His eyes lock with mine and he arches a dark brow. “You were dating someone else. I stole you.” He slips his hand around my neck and tugs me down for a kiss. I oblige him and then, because I can, I oblige him again. I didn’t come up here with the intention of having morning sex and I tell him so—“I have so much to do before tomorrow”—but then he tilts his head and our mouths open and his tongue sweeps into my mouth. My body says, Scratch that—I have so much Beau to do before tomorrow, and our kisses turn hungry and hot. His teeth graze my bottom lip.
“The sun isn’t even up yet,” he says, convincing me. “Besides, what we’re about to do is a natural stress reliever.”
It’s adorable that he thinks there’s a possibility I would stop this. A freight train could not carry me away from him in this moment. I’ve forgotten there’s a life outside this room.
Both of his hands grip my waist and he holds me against him as he rolls his hips. My sweatshirt gets tugged off and then my soft polka dot nightgown gets unbuttoned slowly. I’m dressed for comfort, not seduction, but Beau makes me feel sexy no matter what I’m wearing.
My chest is bared and his hands are sloping up the bottom of my rib cage then I’m arching my back to make it oh so easy for him to reach my breasts.
“Can you reach the side table from here?” he asks huskily.
“I can if I scoot off you a little.”
Apparently he doesn’t like that idea, because he wraps his arm around my waist and turns us over. I’m pressed into the mattress as he reaches over to grab for protection. It’s either a genius move or a happy coincidence that he grinds into me with every movement. I’m left squirming, not to mention how deeply sexy it is that he can just maneuver me around however he pleases. I bet if I asked, he’d toss me over his shoulder like he did that day my oven caught fire. Maybe he’d even wear a little fireman getup. I decide that’s what I want for my birthday.
He laughs and shakes his head. “You are impressively weird.”
Oops, I’ve said my fantasy out loud.
“But you’ll do it, right?”
“When’s your birthday?”
“July.”
“Yeah, okay, but my birthday is in August and I have a different fantasy I want us to try out.”
I’m so excited I squirm. “Oh my gosh! Tell me! Please don’t say French maid. I’ll do it, but it’s so cliché, monsieur.”
“No, hear me out.” He talks while he rolls his hips against me. I’m going to orgasm in five milliseconds. I yank my pajama shorts down and my panties go with them. His boxer briefs disappear next. When he brushes across my bare, sensitive skin, I emit a delicate exhale.
“Tell me,” I urge him.
“I’ll be in all black, a tuxedo or a suit.”
His hand is dragging down to rub circles against my thigh. I can hardly listen.
“You’ll be in white.”
“Uh huh.”
My eyes flutter closed as his thumb brushes me right where I need it to. In a few seconds my toes will curl and I will dig my fingers into his shoulders to show him just how much I like what he’s doing.
“Cake.”
“I’m not following.”
“Rings.”
His words distract me from my impending orgasm. I jerk away from him and take hold of his wrist, hitting pause on this little lovefest. It’s torture, but I need my wits about me for the next few seconds.
“That sounds like a wedding!” I exclaim.
“What?”
“This scenario you’re describing!”
“Ohhhhh…” He laughs like he feels bad for me. “You thought I meant…yeah, I could see how—”
I narrow my eyes. “Ha ha haa.”
He’s smiling, so damn pleased with himself.
“I just like how you look in white,” he says, tearing open the condom wrapper. “And to be fair, most of your days involve some form of cake.”
I’m kissing his mouth between every word just to get him to shuddup. This isn’t a proposal, obviously. We’ve only been dating a few weeks, and I refuse to tell our future children that their father proposed to me when we were naked and tumbling around in the sheets.
We’re still laughing and teasing when he pushes into me all at once, and then I’m so, so full and happy. The two sensations almost overwhelm me.
He holds some of his weight up so he can kiss my cheek and neck. I tilt my head to give him easier access, and I remember the papers I found downstairs in his photo box.
“I wanted you so bad. I knew we couldn’t be together, but…I just wanted to know I wasn’t suffering alone. I wanted to hear your unfiltered thoughts. Was I even on your radar back then?”
He pulls back to cradle my cheeks and his blue eyes dart back and forth between mine. He looks deeply concerned.
“You want to know if I saw you the day you ran in after school in your loose-fitting uniform? You could barely look me in the eye when I thanked you for the tour of that apartment, and you tripped over your words. Or what about the day I moved in? You made me lemonade. I still remember your flip-flops.”
“Beau.”
“How about when we went to visit my mom? You were wearing those damn jean shorts—I nearly drove straight to the state penitentiary. Or what about when I taught you how to dance in your kitchen and you were crying, but you didn’t want me to see? You were so earnest and young, yet I couldn’t help you. I couldn’t beat Preston up, and I couldn’t make him see how beautiful you were—worse, I didn’t want him to see.”
Laughter and tears bubble out of me. “I was so in love with you that day you drove off. How dare you break my teenage heart?”
I’m teasing, and yet it seems some small part of me still demands atonement. With every soft touch, he taps into a long-buried time capsule of forgotten angst. Feelings don’t have an expiration date. Movies make it seem like years of aching are all erased the moment love becomes requited, but it’s not always that easy to hit refresh, because realistically, I don’t want to leave behind the painful moments that formed the basis of this fierce love. It’s the reason it feels so good to be lying here underneath him. It’s why I’ll never take for granted the things in life that can be washed away without notice.
He smiles, but senses a sincerity in my playful question.
“Lauren?”
His hard eyes stay fixed on me until I meet his gaze.
“I love you.”
A tear slips down my cheek and he kisses it away.
“Forgive me,” he begs tenderly.
His hips roll gently, and his movements are just as pleading as his words.
“Forgive me.”
I nod and bury my face against his neck.
He sinks deep inside of me and stays there, kissing my cheeks and chin and neck. When he speaks, his whisper tickles the shell of my ear. “Tell me you love me too.”
A delirious, blissful laugh spills out of me. “Of course I love you, Beau. You were my first kiss.”
“And your last?” he asks teasingly.
I smile. “And my last.”